Historian Helena P. Schrader discusses ancient Spartan society and culture, seeking to rectify a number of common misconceptions. She also provides excerpts from her biographical novels about Leonidas and reviews of books on ancient Sparta. For more, visit her website at: http://spartareconsidered.com

Ancient Hoplites

Friday, February 1, 2013

As everyone with even a cursory knowledge of Sparta knows, Spartan
citizens were professional soldiers. Spartiates trained for war in the agoge,
they spent the first ten years of their adult lives (ages 21-30) on what
amounted to “active duty,” and the next thirty years of their lives in the
ancient equivalent of the reserves. Not only this, but, we are told, Spartiates
were prohibited from learning and pursing other professions and so there were
no potters and no carpenters, no shipwrights and no smiths among Spartan
citizens. These undisputed facts have
led most people to see Spartan citizens as soldiers only, ignoring the fact
that despite their life-long service in the military, Spartan citizens could in
fact be much more than soldiers. They were also the administrators of a large,
prosperous and exceptionally complex state.

Lacedaemon stretched from the Ionian to the Aegean Sea and
had an estimated population of 60,000 or more. It had at least three classes of
inhabitants (helots, perioikoi and Spartiates). It had a public school – unlike
any other city of its age. It had a great number of public festivals with complex
rituals involving choral, dance and athletic competitions. It successfully
competed in the pan-hellenic games. It pursued extensive diplomacy throughout the
then known world. And all this in
addition to pursuing a brutal war that dragged out over generations in the
second half of the fifth and early fourth century. In short, Sparta was a highly sophisticated
society, which could not have been managed by two bickering kings, 28 men in
their dotage and five amateurs elected for a single year. Sparta’s centuries of pre-eminence in the
ancient world – and its reputation for good governance and order – can only be
explained by hypothesizing a well-functioning administration that kept Sparta’s
institutions operating.

This logical conclusion is supported by various sources
which make oblique reference to ill-defined dignitaries that
evidently supported the known institutions of the Spartan state. For example, the
Paidonomos and his assistants, priests, “magistrates,” and “heralds.” While there is no explicit evidence (except
with respect to the Paidonomos) that these positions were filled by Spartiates,
it is unlikely that the Spartans would have entrusted the education of their
children, their relationship with the Gods, communication with the enemy or the
enforcement of their laws to perioikoi, much less helots. In short, there were many tasks and responsibilities in addition to soldiering that have to have been performed by Spartiate
full-citizens after they went off active duty.

Let’s start with the agoge. Although Xenophon and others speak only of
“the” Paidagogos, as if one man alone controlled the entire agoge, such a
notion illogical. We know that effective
education requires low ratios of instructors to pupils, and even taking into
account an age cohort of eirenes providing a degree of internal discipline each
year, it is not credible that there were no other agoge officials. It is far more likely, given the size and
importance of the agoge to Spartan society, that there was a relatively large
college of instructors, or at least Deputy and Assistant Paidagogoi, maybe the Mastigophoroi
usually portrayed as a bunch of
whip-wielding thugs, but more likely responsible and respected educators.

Descriptions of Spartan life suggest a variety of other
activities that would also have been performed by Spartan citizens if not
“professionally” then, nevertheless, with the conscientiousness expected of full
or part-time public servants. For
example, Sparta was famous for its choruses and dance performances. Anyone who
has engaged in either activity knows that large groups of people cannot be brought to
perform harmoniously together without someone choreographing, directing, and conducting.
Sparta undoubtedly had chorus masters, and it is seems highly unlikely that choral and dance masters
would have been drawn from the ranks of the helots or perioikoi. Just as with the agoge instructors, it is far
more probable that these were adult citizens.

We also know that the Spartan kings kept records and
maintained archives. Control of such
delicate material as oracles from Delphi, communication between the kings and
their permanent representatives, correspondence between the ephors and
commanders in the field or ambassadors to foreign capitals would hardly have
been entrusted to anyone but Spartiates.
In all probability, therefore, there was at least one “archivist” for
each royal house, and this position was probably filled by a Spartiate, who was
either appointed or elected. He probably had deputies and assistants as well.

Then there is the issue of taxation. Taxation was
particularly important in Sparta because citizenship itself depended on paying
two kinds of tax: the agoge fees when immature, and the syssitia fees after
attaining citizenship. Someone had to keep
track of who paid how much, and they had to do that each and every month. Maybe each syssitia had a part time
“treasurer” too keep track of fees, but the agoge was large and would have
required at least one (and probably more) full-time “treasurers.” It is not
credible that perioikoi would have been entrusted with control of records that
revealed (and in part determined) the strength of the citizen body and so the
army in future generations.

Furthermore, taxes also had to be collected from the
helots and perioikoi. Spartiates who
collected too much from their helots were subject to sanctions, so someone –
and it had to be one of their peers – must have been keeping track of how much
was due and how much collected. Even if
not explicit, it is also fair to assume that the perioikoi were subject to
taxation, just as metics in Athens. Again, an institutionalized means of
assessing and collecting those taxes would have been necessary to ensure
everything functioned properly, and -- at least until Sparta’s population decline
became critical -- such an apparatus would have been headed by Spartiates. Given the size and expanse of Lacedaemon, my
guess is there would have been many more than one citizen engaged in tax
collection!

Once taxes were collected, they had to be put to work, so we
come next to the business of financial management.
Sparta would have needed some mechanism to allocate funding to various state
expenditures. Money was needed for the
army, of course, but also for the fleet, and for public works like roads and
fountains and drainage systems and for public buildings from temples to
theaters, monuments and barracks. Managing such projects requires full-time
public servants committed to ensuring that the intentions of the state (as
expressed, one assumes, by the Assembly via the ephors) are fulfilled and that funds
are not misallocated.

And finally there was the Spartan army. Friend and foe alike admired the Spartan army
not only for its relatively good performance on the battlefield but also for
its organization and professionalism. Yet
as most soldiers will tell you, an army’s effectiveness is not simply a matter
of fighting capacity. A good army is well fed, well equipped, and
well-supplied. It has effective
command-and-control mechanisms, efficient lines of communication, as well as adequate and flexible transport. A good army has a medical corps and, in
centuries past, good veterinarians as well. In short, there is a great deal more
to creating an effective fighting force than drill with weapons. Sparta’s army must have had not just good
soldiers and officers, but good quartermasters as well.

While all these various positions were “honorary” in the
sense that they were without remuneration, they were nevertheless jobs
requiring considerable time, energy, dedication and skill. Spartiates may not
have earned a living from these jobs, since they all had their estates, but
they probably viewed their performance in such jobs as honorable public
service. Whether elected or appointed, ambitious Spartiates would undoubtedly
have competed for these positions, and a man's performance in such public service would have contributed to his reputation and prestige. Men in these positions would in turn have been
influential, becoming part of the complex network of “leading” citizens that
helped shape Spartan policy behind the scenes.

There is nothing sinister about this. It happens in every society –
including our own.